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Leadership Skill: Rebalancing the Stress Load
By harveyrobbins | October 22, 2007
There used to be only two schools of thought about increasing groups’ acceptance of change: Pummel and Pamper. Pummel’s attitude about what workers were feeling was basically: Who cares? Pamper went to the opposite extreme, taking responsibility for everything happening in the individual worker’s head.
In recent years a third option, weighted towards Push, has appeared. It involves laying out negative scenarios and options: adapt or you’re fired. It feeds into peoples’ naturally negative perspective. The best-known spokesperson for Push in recent years has been Morris Schechtman, once a psychotherapist and now a management consultant. His book Working Without a Net, advocates the abandonment of touchie-feelie programs that shield workers from the realities of competition.
The traditional view is that it is not management’s job to get inside employees’ heads and worry about their anxieties. To anticipate workers’ negative feelings amounts to caretaking, one of the more insidious forms of Pamper. And whether you get inside employees’ heads or not, what happens there does affect performance. Reading workers the riot act may quell the riotous. It does not swell the ranks of the ready, willing, and able.
Removing the safety net sends a scary message to people who are trying to help the organization change, but who are not quite there yet. There are lots of people with good change potential here, and a company that declares war against employee hand-holding during times of change is going to lose these people.
The logical next step is to graft a Pull dimension onto the Push position. Make it plain to workers that those who are unwilling to change don’t have a future with your organization. They have frying pan written all over them. But provide every possible pathway to allow worthwhile in-betweeners a chance to escape the burning platform.
Change means adding stress on people. It drains us of our energy reserves. The more you ask people to change, the more resources you must supply to help balance the stress load. If their change space has shrunk to the dot of an “i,” you need to expand that space again, so that the person can do what needs doing.
It is important to explain to people that you understand that change is difficult for them. I suggest companies adopt a stress-watch program to outline the ways which change-induced distress can swamp a worker and programs to alleviate the most common kinds of distress.
Some Japanese companies, for example, practice rage management. One factory provides workers with a room where you can beat up a human-shaped dummy with a mask of your manager on it. If employees at your company are nursing a grievance, managers should get it out in the fresh air. Focus group discussions, for example, are a common way for people to get their feelings out, which even Schechtman agrees is essential.
 Satisfaction is never guaranteed - that would be Pamper - but at least there is the relief of getting a problem out of the cramped confines of the worker’s stomach lining.
Topics: Leadership Skill |